Victims of Fate
by sapphire-child
Summary: Sometimes winning a fight can be worse than losing it. When Charlie goes up against the biggest bully of them all – fate – he knows that he’s never going to win.


**Title:** Victims of Fate  
**Summary:** Sometimes winning a fight can be worse than losing it. Won first place in lostfichallenge #59: you win  
**Original Post Date:**05/11/2007  
**Spoilers:** up to the very end of season three  
**Disclaimer:** Lost is belong to ABC. The lyrics in the title are belong to Placebo.

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"Don't fight with your fists if you can help it," Megan Pace told her two young sons as she tended to their battle wounds. Like all young lads, they were inclined to come home from time to time with blacked eyes and – in the case of Charlie this particular day – a bloody nose. Megan just wished that they could learn that it was alright to walk away from a fight. "Always fight with your brains first. Fists are an absolute final option. And if you can walk away – then do it. Sometimes winning a fight can be worse than losing it."

Charlie took her words to heart and he kept them with him his entire life. Growing up a scrawny, timid child, his sarcasm all too soon became a force to be reckoned with. Grim humour became a defence mechanism far stronger than his body could ever – and would ever – be.

It was a rare occurrence that Charlie became angered enough to use his fists and of these, few had been true victories. On the mainland he'd had a handful of punch ups with his brother and once or twice when he had been deprived of his drugs he'd found someone to vent his frustrations on. On the island he'd only hit Sawyer (deservedly so) and Sayid once.

But when fate started to play with his mortality, Charlie suddenly found that there were no fight tactics for him anymore. He couldn't beat fate up for targeting him and he couldn't try to talk his way out of the situation either. All he could do was hope and pray that Desmond didn't get bored of trying to save him.

Charging down the hill in Hurley's resurrected van had been the closest that he ever really got to thumbing his nose at fate. For almost a week after that he'd been wild with elation, thinking that maybe he'd beaten it at its own game.

That illusion was shattered when Desmond warned him, completely out of the blue, that if he helped Claire to catch her seagull then he would invariably die. It was then that he began to realise that the flashes weren't going to stop. His days were numbered. And no promise that either Claire or Desmond made to him was going to change that. Either way, eventually, fate was going to get him – there was nothing left for him to do now but try to live his final weeks, days, hours as well as he possible could.

Living in the moment certainly takes on a whole new meaning when you find out that you're going to die and there's absolutely nothing that you can do about it. But still, when Desmond told him that this was it – this was the day he was meant to go, Charlie was terrified. There were still so many loose ends he hadn't tied up, so many things he wished he'd done and so many things he never got to say and never would get the chance to say.

It seemed that the irony Gods were in cahoots with the fates too.

But really, how could he keep on pretending that he wasn't a danger to himself? That he wasn't a danger to the people that he loved? His mother's words came back to him all in a rush. What if in order to keep himself alive he had to sacrifice somebody close to him? How could he live with himself if one day Claire or Hurley or Desmond were gone because he had been too cowardly to face his fate like a man? Maybe this was one of the battles that he wasn't supposed to win.

And so he laid all of his arguments aside, took a deep breath and let go. There was no point in fighting it anymore. If this is what was meant to happen then he couldn't very well stop it. And really, who was he to question the reason for his death? He was only one small, insignificant soul in a world that clearly didn't want him in it anymore. He'd tried and failed to beat fate at its own game and it had merely come swinging back around when he'd least expected it to. It wasn't ever going to stop. Charlie didn't want to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life for the one bully that he knew he was never going to be able to beat.

Strangely enough, at the end, it was comforting to know that this was where he was meant to be. As Charlie pushed away from the door he shut his eyes and crossed himself.

And his final thought as the last of his precious air left his lungs and the water flooded in to drown him, was to whoever had assigned him this cruel fate.

"You win."


End file.
